And so the narrative proceeds: 

Verse 6.  “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”

This has been incomprehensible to the critics.  It has been supposed that by this “firmament” was meant the heavens; and that the waters “above the firmament” were the clouds; and it has been said that this was a barbarian’s conception, to wit, that the unbounded and illimitable space, into which the human eye, aided by the telescope, can penetrate for thousands of billions of miles, was a blue arch a few hundred feet high, on top of which were the clouds; and that the rain was simply the leaking of the water through this roof of the earth.  And men have said:  “Call ye this real history, or inspired narrative?  Did God know no more about the nature of the heavens than this?”

And Religion has been puzzled to reply.

But read Genesis in this new light:  There was water everywhere; floods from the clouds, floods from the melting ice; floods on the land, where the return of the evaporated moisture was not able, by the channel-ways of the earth, to yet find its way back to the oceans.

“And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”

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That is to say, first a great island appeared dividing the waters from the waters.  This was “the island of the innocent,” referred to by Job, where the human race did not utterly perish.  We shall see more about it hereafter.

“7.  And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament:  and it was so.

“8. And God called the firmament Heaven.  And the evening and the morning were the second day.”

The Hebrew Rokiâ is translated stereoma, or solidity, in the Septuagint version.  It meant solid land—­not empty space.

And if man was not or had not yet been on earth, whence could the name Heaven have been derived?  For whom should God have named it, if there were no human ears to catch the sound?  God needs no lingual apparatus—­he speaks no human speech.

The true meaning probably is, that this was the region that had been for ages, before the Drift and the Darkness, regarded as the home of the godlike, civilized race; situated high above the ocean, “in the midst of the waters,” in mid-sea; precipitous and mountainous, it was the first region to clear itself of the descending torrents.

What next?

“9.  And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear:  and it was so.

“10.  And God called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas:  and God saw that it was good.”

This may be either a recapitulation of the facts already stated, or it may refer to the gradual draining off of the continents, by the passing away of the waters; the continents